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The Brain (1988)

The first 15 or so minutes of The Brain are pretty fucking prime. It’s 1980’s sci-fi/horror and culture satire with freak-out surrealism and crazy hallucinations. The comic satire of pop psychology self-help cultism starts out as mordant and hilarious.

Sadly, the movie can’t keep this pace and limps along through occasional blasts of humor, cheap practical creature effects, and a lot of running and chasing. Still, you’ve got this lovely/awful “brain” behind it all, which controls people’s minds and causes hallucinations in those it cannot control, that also manages to eat people and grow. It’s like a long-lost “Madball” toy on steroids.

This comes from Ed Hunt, he of Bloody Birthday (1981) and features David Gale (so well appreciated in Re-Animator (1985). That’s not real pedigree for this Canadian science fiction slash horror silliness, but it doesn’t need one.

Tom Bresnahan plays Jim, perhaps one of the most obnoxious teenage heroes ever to grace the silver screen. I kept rooting for him to get bitch-slapped.